by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2021 | Farming
Africa grows a great deal of food and captures little of its value; much of it is exported raw, processed elsewhere, and sometimes bought back finished. That is the tension East African agriculture carries into today: trading under the African Continental Free Trade...
by The Fikiria Desk | Sep 4, 2020 | Farming
A Ugandan smallholder’s hardest financial problem is rarely the price of maize. It is getting paid safely, on time, and in a form that leaves a record. Cash at the farm gate is risky to carry, easy to dispute and invisible to any lender. The National Payment...
by The Fikiria Desk | Mar 29, 2020 | Farming
Djibouti imports most of what it eats, and the same port that makes the country a trade hub also makes it dependent on the world’s harvests. That paradox, a logistics power that is food-insecure, frames how the country’s new sovereign wealth fund should be...
by The Fikiria Desk | Mar 25, 2020 | Farming
Somalia has long been a nation of producers whose output rarely reaches its full value. Livestock, crops and fisheries move to market through informal chains that lose value at every hand-off, because the finance, storage and logistics that add value require formal...
by The Fikiria Desk | Jan 1, 2020 | Farming
Rwanda’s economy still rests on its land, on the coffee, tea, maize and horticulture grown by smallholders and moved through thin, expensive supply chains. A financial centre, by contrast, deals in funds and holding companies far above the field. As 2020 opens...